The investigation was made to estimate the settlement, the stress and the allowable stress of the multi-layered ground. For the immediate settlement of the foundation, the generalization of Barber's method was proposed in order to incorporate the stiffness of soils into the deformation of the ground. For this purpose, the first proposal was the method where the equivalent elastic modulus is used. The second proposition was the method to employ the equivalent thickness. It was found that the proposed models describe properly the characteristics of the immediate settlement for the multi-layered ground. An analytical method to calculate the vertical stress was propounded for the multi-layered ground in taking account of the equivalent thickness. The allowable stress of the multi-layered ground was investigated in considering both the allowable value for the immediate settlement and that for the consolidation settlement.